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10Agent-Centered Morality (review)Dialogue 40 (4): 849-851. 2001.In Agent-Centered Morality, George W. Harris constructs a broadly Aristotelian conception of morality and argues for its superiority over Kantian conceptions. Harris approaches morality through human practical reason. He is committed to articulating a plausible account of how human beings think, value, and choose based on their conceptions of their own good. Harris’s ethics is “agent-centered” in that it takes moral obligations to be grounded in what makes life meaningful from the agent’s point …Read more
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24Kant’s Ethical Duties and their Feminist ImplicationsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (sup1): 156-187. 2002.
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221Kant's Conception of Duties Regarding Animals: Reconstruction and ReconsiderationHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 17 (4): 405-23. 2000.In Kant’s moral theory, we do not have duties to animals, though we have duties with regard to them. I reconstruct Kant’s arguments for several types of duties with regard to animals and show that Kant’s theory imposes far more robust requirements on our treatment of animals than one would expect. Kant’s duties regarding animals are perfect and imperfect; they are primarily but not exclusively duties to oneself; and they condemn not merely cruelty to animals for its own sake, but also, such thin…Read more
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2Freedom, primacy, and perfect duties to oneselfIn Kant's Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press. 2010.
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12Animality and Agency: A Kantian Approach to AbortionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (1): 117-37. 2008.This paper situates abortion in the context of women’s duties to themselves. I argue that Kant’s fundamental moral requirement to respect oneself as a rational being, combined with Kant’s view of our animal nature, form the basis for a view of pregnancy and abortion that focuses on women’s agency and moral character without diminishing the importance of their bodies and emotions. The Kantian view of abortion that emerges takes abortion to be morally problematic, but sometimes permissible, and so…Read more
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99Kant’s Theory of Action (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 48 (4): 533-535. 2010.This significant, stimulating contribution to Kantian practical philosophy strives to interpret Kant’s theory of action in ways that will increase readers’ understanding and appreciation of Kant’s moral theory. Its thesis is that Kant combines metaphysical freedom and psychological determinism: our actions within the phenomenal world are causally determined by our prior psychological states in that world and are appearances of our free action in the noumenal world. McCarty argues for a metaphysi…Read more
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26Kant’s Impure Ethics (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (2): 491-493. 2003.The “impure” part of Kant’s ethics consists of material concerning empirical knowledge of human beings. Kant is well-known for his insistence that the supreme moral principle must be discovered through non-empirical consideration of such notions as morality and rational wills. What is less appreciated is that Kant recognized what his critics have always said: that a pure ethics for rational beings in general cannot provide adequate, practical guidance for human beings in particular, real-world s…Read more
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440Kant's ethics and duties to oneselfPacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (4). 1997.This paper investigates the nature and foundation of duties to oneself in Kant's moral theory. Duties to oneself embody the requirement of the formula of humanity that agents respect rational nature in them-selves as well as in others. So understood, duties to oneself are not subject to the sorts of conceptual objections often raised against duties to oneself; nor do these duties support objections that Kant's moral theory is overly demanding or produces agents who are preoccupied with their own…Read more
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23Jens Timmermann, ed. , Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 31 (3): 235-238. 2011.
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248Kant on the Wrongness of 'Unnatural' SexHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 16 (2): 225-48. 1999.I consider Kant’s use of claims about “nature’s ends” in his arguments to establish maxims of homosexual sex, masturbation, and bestiality as constituting “unnatural” sexual vices, which are contrary to one’s duties to oneself as an animal and moral being. I argue, first, that the formula of humanity is the principle best suited for understanding duties to oneself as an animal and moral being; and second, that although natural teleology is relevant to some degree in specifying these duties, it …Read more
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14Kant’s Ethical Duties and their Feminist ImplicationsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (sup1): 157-187. 2002.
Decatur, Georgia, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
Normative Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |